Feeding and Consuming: Ceramic Vessels and Cibola Foodways

Summary

To examine relationships between social transformations and household and communal foodways, this paper draws on detailed vessel form, surface treatment, size, and deposition data from multiple settlements over a period of rapid aggregation, migration, and social change in the Cibola/Zuni region in the 13-14th centuries A.D. Foodways-the ways we produce, prepare, and consume foods-are an important part of human society and culture, and play a vital role in making and maintaining social relationships. In the US Southwest, ceramic vessels were essential tools in nearly every task associated with the production, preparation, and consumption of food, making them an ideal source of data for understanding changes in food practices at multiple scales. Different uses of similar ceramic forms between contemporaneous settlements suggest persistent diversity in certain cuisine practices, while cross-cutting shifts in the sizes of ceramic bowl and jar forms hint at the widespread social and political importance of food in communal life in these periods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21550